New Australian Weather(BOM) /News Addin - 'Big Screen Portal'

[Niall]

Interesting, my music queuing app I was speaking about before uses GDI a little to do the album cover displaying, and it was written in vb.net 2.0 back when the express editions of vs were in early beta, and it kinda fell by the wayside, but now I am inspired to maybe update it, as it was about 80% or more complete, and using a similar method to your app could be integrated into MCE, or at least hacked to allow it to launch and be controlled by the remote

I also looked at directx stuff, but found it was a very very steep learning curve and really over my head for the amount of hours i had to play with this stuff.

Would be interested in the vbscript you are using for the installation, if its available for me to use I will drop you a PM with my email address.

Hi -

Well if I get some time maybe we can sort out how to include your addin in BigScreen Portal - will keep you posted on this..

Also re DirectX - yeah its kinda hairy - but there is some really great wrapper code on CodeProject for most of the managed stuff - the biggest issue I found was that the equivelent 'graphics' class only had very limited functions for string drawing etc - so I needed to use gdi+ for my bitmap creation and then draw it onto a ddraw surface (which is real slow if you need a lot of changing graphics).

With the VBScripts - well I was lazy and don't actually delete them from the installer - so just have a look in the install directory for BSP and you will see them there in original form. Probably better to install v0.6 of Bigscreen Portal (see above message) - as I removed some commented stuff out of the vbs which might be misleading.. The extra bit is you use the 'custom actions' in VS Installer Project for install/uninstall actions (and point to relevant vbs script) - as well as setting the CustomProperties to the hardcoded [TARGETDIR] variable (which points to your installation directory)..

feel free to PM/email me if you have some more specific q's on how to do all this..

cheers

Niall

[Niall]

Niall you have seriously made my day. This is totally awesome and I don't generally like installing a lot of 3rd party stuff so from me that's high praise.

Here's a suggestion for adding a something a bit special... Is it possible that the app could replicate the animated radar and sattelite image capabilities of the BOM website. In particular the animated radar gives you a very accurate picture of what's happening and generally it's only about 10 minutes off real time. I have found that feature more useful than all the forecasting put together as it gives me an indication of what the weather will be like (rainfall wise anyway) for the next couple of hours. Most golfers, fishermen etc will find it impossible to do without once they've seen it. I would recommend retaining the last 6 or more images to provide a better picture than what BOM themselves provide.

Anyway mate... reps from me... big time!

Hi - thanks glad u like it..

I had a similar suggestion from a mate (and plan to include this in my next version as I am scraping all the required data anyhow for the 4 frame loop)... My friend also had same idea of keeping historical pics until deleted (so a movie file could be made after a few days)..

But yeah - I wonder if the forecasters are on some heavy medication sometimes its so innacurate...

cheers

Niall

[Niall]

Niall,

Awesome APP - I made the mistake of rushing to install it before reading the how-2-operate instructions. The layout and ease of use are excellent - and its quick no delay switching between pages. Best new MCE APP so far this year .

Gave it a test drive, couple of suggestions (that I didn't see in readme file or other posts)
Weather APP-
- is it possible to put small instructions on how to use on screen eg back = exit, 1 or 2 to switch, 9 to configure
- noticed that the font size on some of the menus overlapped the box they were in - eg national and satellite
- the "press ok to toggle list/map view" text seems to overlap into the menu
- on the forecast page (mine shows next 3 days), the fonts are slightly large overfilling the text boxes they are in, can't quite read all the info
NEWS APP-
- when reading an article "press ok/enter to return to article list" is overlayed across the text as your reading it, could this be placed elsewhere

Later,

Nudge

lol... rtfm they say.. (i do exactly the same and only look at manuals when it doesn't work)...

Ok anyhow - I think my v0.6 release (probably being uploaded while you typed your feedback) should address almost everything on your list.. (with exception to last point - I haven't moved that 'press ok' text as yet - but will do that for next release)...

cheers

Niall

[benneh]

Cheers Niall, got the vbscript and vb.net express edition is downloading as I type, so with what little free time I have, I will have a crack at getting my code to some kind of release worthy level... I am feeling inspired to dust the cobwebs off my .vbproj

[Nudge]

Niall,

Excellent - downloaded 0.6 got most of what I had listed. The config file and installer still shows 0.5 but the help menu gives it away when running.

Any chance you could put your BIG SCREEN PORTAL icon in "more programs" on top of a blank icon attached below - just so I can give it the MCE look (blue back ground).

Later,

Nudge
Attachment 749

[aswigon]

Niall,

Got some more bugs for you.

The day thing is still not fixed. Still shows the next day name instead of the current day.
When going into the state option and displaying a map for Queensland I only get the south east. Is that normal? The regional map is actually larger than the state map.

Hope this helps,

Andre

[philzgr8]

I had a similar suggestion from a mate (and plan to include this in my next version as I am scraping all the required data anyhow for the 4 frame loop)... My friend also had same idea of keeping historical pics until deleted (so a movie file could be made after a few days)..

Maybe you could configure how many images are retained. The problem of course is always going to be the fact that no images are collected while off-line so I think for me a few hours worth of images will be as much as I'd want.

lol... I don't know about medication but I'm fairly sure some forecasters know Alison Durbin!

[AshW]

Niall,

Thanks again. This has become one of the most useful plugins I've got installed.

Thanks also for getting 0.6 out so fast and incorporating the feedback. I especially like the blue background and text zooming...

As a suggestion, the history graphs would be much easier to follow if there was a time scale along the bottom. Something like 9:00am (because that's when the rainfall measurements are reset), 12:00noon, 9:00pm, 12:00midnight for each day would be great. The animated radar would just top it off!!

Thanks Again. I've also got some interest in the Mobile Stock Market app that you have written. I'll send you a PM or e-mail on that shortly.

Cheers.

[Niall]

Niall,

Got some more bugs for you.

The day thing is still not fixed. Still shows the next day name instead of the current day.
When going into the state option and displaying a map for Queensland I only get the south east. Is that normal? The regional map is actually larger than the state map.

Hope this helps,

Andre

Hi - yeah sorry - I saw that bug (next day name on history screen you mean?) on my setup the other day - but can't seem to reproduce it again.. (so haven't been able to fix it yet - and can't see a problem yet in the code).. I suspect it happens when there is non-updated data in the cache..

With the maps - the issue is to do with some unlinked Forecast<>Observation points in my internal data (as I use these forecast points to filter out which of the many observation points should be plotted on the map and the min/max zoom coordinates - however I think my qld data is not complete). I have a new way of doing this in my 'in dev' version which might fix those problems (i need to have a look at each state/district and see if it works better) - so please wait for new version ..

Niall

[Niall]

Maybe you could configure how many images are retained. The problem of course is always going to be the fact that no images are collected while off-line so I think for me a few hours worth of images will be as much as I'd want.

lol... I don't know about medication but I'm fairly sure some forecasters know Alison Durbin!

Hi - I have the 4 frame loop (for 128km and 256km radar) working nicely in 'test' now - but need to optimize the download/saving routines (so it does some bettter caching/deleting/archiving of images)..

There's a few ways this could be implemented/animated - so currently I'm doing 1 second per frame (from oldest image) - and then pausing for extra second on the last frame.. (to make it more apparent that it's the latest one).. let me know if you think there's a better way to do the frames.. (based on 4 frame loop being available as opposed to longterm history which needs a bit more thought)..

cheers

Niall

[philzgr8]

Hi - I have the 4 frame loop (for 128km and 256km radar) working nicely in 'test' now - but need to optimize the download/saving routines (so it does some bettter caching/deleting/archiving of images)..

There's a few ways this could be implemented/animated - so currently I'm doing 1 second per frame (from oldest image) - and then pausing for extra second on the last frame.. (to make it more apparent that it's the latest one).. let me know if you think there's a better way to do the frames.. (based on 4 frame loop being available as opposed to longterm history which needs a bit more thought)..

Great News! As far as the looping goes I suppose if you want to get fancy you could fully replicate the BOM solution by allowing either 1-4-1-4 or 1,2,3,4,3,2,1 looping but I never use the latter so I'm happy with jumping back to 1. It might be interesting to see the relative visual plusses and minuses of either pausing as per your implementation or inserting a recognisable start image. This would allow for an unknown number of looping images if implemented correctly. (For example using date stamp as a place-holder?)

Once again... great work Niall!

[Tax Invoice]

This looks much better!
Well done.

Just wondering if I uninstall MC Weather to give this a go, will I be required to reinstall MCE?

I know it seems like a dumb question, but everything is running great right now so I'm loath to muck about!